Fonolo Investigative Report: Hold Time in Real Time: Booking with Air Canada

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Fonolo Investigative Report Hold time in Real Time Booking with Air CanadaPicture it: A young American family booking a flight to a city in another country via Air Canada. Imagine them having to wait for more than 20 minutes before a customer service agent gets on the phone, only to then be transferred to another department.

Picture this, too: Imagine trying to get a flight changed at the last minute and waiting on hold for more than 50 minutes until you finally get through.

And, imagine this: You receive a gift card for Christmas and it doesn’t work, so you have to wait for customer service to get back to you. And in this scenario, it feels like that takes days.

These three situations have all been experienced by people just like you and I looking to connect with Air Canada customer service professionals to either book flights, change flight times, or simply access information about travel requirements and needs. According to onholdwith.com, a community-driven website aiming to end hold time for good, website Air Canada is among the most notorious hold time offenders. In addition, data from the website shows a real-time view of Twitter complaints for Canada and research shows more than 119 complaints in just the last week alone.

 

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CPaaS Expands but Boundaries Getting Vague

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CPaaS Expands but Boundaries Getting VagueSix months ago I wrote that “CPaaS is a victim of its own success. The founding principle was to free communications from the grip of the carriers. But now many carriers have a CPaaS offering.”

Some folks responded that the point of CPaaS was not to demote the carriers, and that its success should be judged by the new products that it enables and not by whether it’s a net plus or minus for carriers. I admit it is easy to get wrapped up in, “inside baseball” type discussions. Maybe I spend too much time with analyst types.

So, what is the right way to judge success? What lasting impact do we expect CPaaS to leave?

 

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Four Reasons Why a Personalized Customer Service Experience is Important

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Four Reasons Why a Personalized Customer Service Experience is Important

Today’s customers are savvier than ever before and one thing many of them are looking for is a custom experience tailored specifically to their individual needs. A study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Ada showed that personalized customer service has a variety of benefits for the company providing these customized experiences. Companies with personalized customer service see a decrease in operational costs, more efficient call center agents and higher levels of customer satisfaction and engagement.

Despite the clear benefits of personalized customer service, only 5% of companies said they were implementing customized experiences regularly. With so few companies jumping on the customization train, brands have a huge opportunity to set themselves apart. Let’s take a closer look at some of the rewards you can reap by giving your customers that personal touch!

 

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4 Customer Service Books Every CS Pro Should Own

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4 Customer Service Books Every CS Pro Should Own-450As Harry Truman famously stated, “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.”  Wise words. Although this is true, how do customer service leaders strategically read to a) learn how to turn themselves into optimal leaders; and b) transform their teams into the high-performing customer service engines they aspire to be?

With this being the “Era of the Customer,” it is now more important than ever for customer service professionals to stay ahead of ever-changing trends in the vast landscape that is the customer service and customer experience industries. Yes, an unwavering intellectual curiosity is a must in such an industry, but as you well know, it’s not always enough. There exists a myriad of books out there to choose from, and while it may seem daunting to know where to begin, we Fonolonians can give you a leg-up.

 

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Are You Prepared for Unpredicted Spikes in Call Volume? [Slideshare]

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Are You Prepared for Unpredicted Spikes in Call Volume [Webinar]While today’s tech-savvy consumers are using more non-voice channels to connect with businesses, the act of picking up the phone to quickly and verbally resolve an issue (complex or otherwise) isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The problem with this? According to an Accenture study, consumers’ top two complaints were:

  1. Having to contact customer service multiple times; and
  2. Being kept on hold for too long.

This consumer pet peeve is exacerbated by the fact that contact centers routinely face expected, and unexpected, spikes in call volume. Expected spikes can be a result of seasonality and promotional events, and unexpected spikes can stem from product recalls or natural disasters.

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How to Prepare your Call Center for Cyber Monday and Black Friday [Guide]

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How to Prepare your Call Center for Cyber Monday and Black Friday [Guide]While Black Friday and Cyber Monday may seem a long ways off, smart retail contact center and call center leaders are already planning for the variety of challenges this period poses. In 2018, Black Friday pulled in $6.2 billion in online sales and Cyber Monday saw $7.8 billion in sales (both record highs). Given these numbers, it’s unsurprising that calls to businesses rose more than 375% over the past two holiday seasons. While this unbelievable sales flood is a boon for a retailer’s bottom line, it can be a painful time both for customers seeking assistance and those in charge of retail contact centers.

It might seem tempting to neglect the customer experience in favor of the “just get it done” mentality that stems from such a drastic increase in call volume, it’s important that your call center aims to please during the busiest sales periods of the year. After all, this is how customer relationships are made or broken.

So, how can call centers improve customer interactions during the most important weekend of the year? Look no further … we have you covered! In this tip sheet, you’ll read about four of the most important ways you can get your call center into gear with specific action items. (Download the full tip sheet here!)

 

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Behind the Curtain: Demystifying AI and NLP [Live Discussion]

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demystifying AI and NLP

Anyone who works in the customer service arena has witnessed an explosion in the hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP). Why is this the case? Popular AI tools like chatbots use NLP (or, the ability to understand human language) to interact with customers on a more sophisticated level than the IVRs of old. There is no doubt that these technologies will play an important role within the industry in the years and decades ahead. However, as the hype grows, and the bandwagon gets bigger, it’s easy to become confused.

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Acquisitions Point to Messaging’s Future in Customer Service

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Acquisitions Point to Messaging’s Future in Customer ServiceBig question: How should text-based communication work alongside voice for customer service? In the dark ages, the only answer to this was email, in its own silo, and a call center, in its own silo. Then real-time chat came along. And then messaging, powered by massive platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp, made an appearance. Meanwhile, driving in its own lane, is good ‘ol SMS.

For now, you can find companies trying any or all of these strategies. You can read success stories in each. But, at some point, it’s likely that one of these channels will become the dominant companion to voice. By that I mean it will have enough critical mass that it’s just assumed by consumers that any large company will offer it, in the way we assume any large company has a toll-free number and an email address.

 

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The Contact Center Guide to Managing Spikes in Call Volume [Industry Report]

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Managing Call Volume Spikes Industry Report

Contact center managers are, at their core, problem-solvers. One of the most challenging problems they often face is dealing with unpredictable spikes in call volume. Sometimes the causes of call spikes are understood, even anticipated. Yet, in many cases, these periods of peak call volume come as a real shock to everyone in the contact center. For example, a marketing event promoting a product sale would be an easy predictor for an influx in calls, whereas an unexpected power outage or sudden bout of the flu in the contact center isn’t something that can be readily planned for. Or is it?

This guide will tackle those questions, and more, head on!  Continue reading →

4 Brands Using Cutting-Edge Customer Service Technology

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4 Brands Using Cutting-Edge Customer Service TechnologyWith the powerful tool of social media, customers everywhere now have an expansive platform with which to voice their feelings about their customer service experiences. This puts a huge amount of pressure on call center agents to perform. Of course, companies hope that their customers use these social platforms to sing the praises of their brand. But, of course, this is not always the case: An IBM study found that customer service operations are often both pricey and inefficient. Companies spend $1 trillion on 265 billion customer service calls each year and 50% of the complaints were unresolved.

It’s not a great track record.

 

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